19 Days and Counting…

As some of you may know Mike and I are preparing for a gig at The Crescent Brewery on the 29th of December. We are playing from 8-11 and are doing 3 sets. It has been my goal to make this set list the strongest we have done yet as an acoustic duo. We are playing many blues songs and songs from the 60’s and 70’s. Just for fun I added in a great song by the Violent Femmes. I have also added in a song I have wanted to do for the longest time, “If You Could Only See” By Tonic. As well as the usual suspects we are also doing a few Welsh folk songs that some are sung in Welsh, some are macaronic, 1/2 Welsh and 1/2 English, and some are in English. Probably the parts of the set list I am most happy about are the 3 originals that I wrote and the original that Mike and I wrote together. I finally finished up the last of the changes on “No Feeling” which is our joint compilation. First I transposed it and then I added a capo on the second fret to bring it up to the key I wanted the song in. I am really pleased with the originals. 2 of them, “Journey” and “Make You See” were songs I wrote over 12 years ago and the other 2 were written this last year. For me the song writing process is either really fast, or very painfully slow. It took me over 6 months to lock down “Empty” and “No Feeling”. “Empty” has always been complete as far as the chord progressions went, what took so long was the vocal melody lines. It took over 6 months to find the vocal melody line that I was happy with and then I had to lock it in my head to where I could actually hear the melody line without actually hearing the music. I finally got it locked in this last week. So we are rehearsing every night and getting ready. Acoustic duos take much more work because every mistake is painfully obvious, you don’t have a bunch of other background noise to cover up when you make a mistake, hence the extra rehearsal time. On that note the full 5 piece is back in rehearsals tonight getting ready for the New Year’s Eve gig and life is very good…. 🙂

Perception shapes in countless forms. The longing for attention, affection and connection are the same; only the intensity of giving and receiving it differs. All is connected even when seemingly disconnected.